lilly
5/09/2008
5/06/2008
life is good: a cautionary tale
I have lots to say. Unfortunately, as it goes, I only have about 10 minutes to say it. So this will require tweaking. This song brought clarity on my long drive, so I listened to it while writing as well. Ironically, the video itself scans NY city and all its hidden beauty and ugliness. No wonder I thought it appropriate for this piece of writing. "Green Arrow"
Like so many that must stop to eat, or sleep, I find myself unable to continue when thoughts have been brewing and need to surface. They fester while driving in city traffic at 4-way stops and lights, they stew in rural settings while battling the other lane traffic driving way too fast.
Still, the thoughts linger and grow, or bloom and grow as in the lovely "edelweiss". The best ones are recorded here.
In my childhood while leaving a beautiful oasis and clear to me that I would never be returning, I made an effort to take in those last few details--sights and smells mostly--before departing for good. As I grew older, these kinds of situations happened more and more frequently--visiting different countries, friends from far away, even visitations or funerals for loved ones--these places, objects, and faces left an imprint on my memory and remain to this day.
As the gift of writing exposed its wretched head, I reminded myself (as my mother continues to do..) that it was my duty to record these memories in some written form for others to see but more for a keepsake for myself-- as a photograph captured in time.
This is one of those times.
As I mentioned leaving a place that one realizes will be their last visit marks a memory and in my case never returning requires a longer gaze, a keen eye for detail and an almost inevitable don't-look-back-emotional quality. I often say, "this will make great fodder for a book," it will not so much be fodder, but what seems to be real life for me. Humor can most always be found hinged to tragedy in some way. Ask Chekhov if you don't believe me.
Anyway, I don't mean this to be dramatic. It is what it is, it was what it was, and it shall be what it shall be.
No denying it, over the past four years I have built up a tolerance to beginning and abrupt endings; and have lost (for the most part) the necessity for attaching my "self" to people or things and living distanced from too much intimacy. Not intimacy as an amourous act or even relationship so much as the closeness of others and letting people in.
I am currrently reading a book that seems to stress these themes-- Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish: ''El amor en los tiempos del cólera'', 1985) is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez about a fifty-year love triangle between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza, and Doctor Juvenal Urbino set in the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century (roughly 1880 to 1930). The novel, a tale of unrequited love, explores the idea that suffering for love is a kind of nobility.
As many can attest, if the bitter wind of love rips you once, even twice, one
learns to exercise caution from then on. But losing someone slowly whether to circumstance or illness or age, carrying it on over long periods....these things are even more difficult to endure.....
So letting go and trying to burn an image of a day spent, a place explored, a grassy meadow, a quarry, a playground, a ravine--the fragrance in the air, the placement of the sun and clouds, the gate of a child, the sad eyes of a tired friend, the green water in mason jars holding bright yellow mustard plants, the hearts taped to the love nest, the eagle--no hawk-- soaring low look for its prey, the bliss in a child's eyes upon eating the sweet, the lovely arrangement of lilacs and hydrangas lovingly picked for a spouse set next to her place at the table, the trembling hand of an elder clutching a purple vase, the careless way books are loved and stored, the beauty of springtime, the grim look upon a loved ones face receiving bad news, the trail of crumbs left from a child, the celebratory wine glasses left from the evening before, the dried dandy lion presented with earnest after doing a bad thing, the plough-plop of rocks tossed in a creek bed, the pileup of shoes scattered next to a nearby doorway.... the sound of gravel bouncing off the wheel chambers of my car as I drive away for the last time.
I
Like so many that must stop to eat, or sleep, I find myself unable to continue when thoughts have been brewing and need to surface. They fester while driving in city traffic at 4-way stops and lights, they stew in rural settings while battling the other lane traffic driving way too fast.
Still, the thoughts linger and grow, or bloom and grow as in the lovely "edelweiss". The best ones are recorded here.
In my childhood while leaving a beautiful oasis and clear to me that I would never be returning, I made an effort to take in those last few details--sights and smells mostly--before departing for good. As I grew older, these kinds of situations happened more and more frequently--visiting different countries, friends from far away, even visitations or funerals for loved ones--these places, objects, and faces left an imprint on my memory and remain to this day.
As the gift of writing exposed its wretched head, I reminded myself (as my mother continues to do..) that it was my duty to record these memories in some written form for others to see but more for a keepsake for myself-- as a photograph captured in time.
This is one of those times.
As I mentioned leaving a place that one realizes will be their last visit marks a memory and in my case never returning requires a longer gaze, a keen eye for detail and an almost inevitable don't-look-back-emotional quality. I often say, "this will make great fodder for a book," it will not so much be fodder, but what seems to be real life for me. Humor can most always be found hinged to tragedy in some way. Ask Chekhov if you don't believe me.
Anyway, I don't mean this to be dramatic. It is what it is, it was what it was, and it shall be what it shall be.
No denying it, over the past four years I have built up a tolerance to beginning and abrupt endings; and have lost (for the most part) the necessity for attaching my "self" to people or things and living distanced from too much intimacy. Not intimacy as an amourous act or even relationship so much as the closeness of others and letting people in.
I am currrently reading a book that seems to stress these themes-- Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish: ''El amor en los tiempos del cólera'', 1985) is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez about a fifty-year love triangle between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza, and Doctor Juvenal Urbino set in the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century (roughly 1880 to 1930). The novel, a tale of unrequited love, explores the idea that suffering for love is a kind of nobility.
As many can attest, if the bitter wind of love rips you once, even twice, one
learns to exercise caution from then on. But losing someone slowly whether to circumstance or illness or age, carrying it on over long periods....these things are even more difficult to endure.....
So letting go and trying to burn an image of a day spent, a place explored, a grassy meadow, a quarry, a playground, a ravine--the fragrance in the air, the placement of the sun and clouds, the gate of a child, the sad eyes of a tired friend, the green water in mason jars holding bright yellow mustard plants, the hearts taped to the love nest, the eagle--no hawk-- soaring low look for its prey, the bliss in a child's eyes upon eating the sweet, the lovely arrangement of lilacs and hydrangas lovingly picked for a spouse set next to her place at the table, the trembling hand of an elder clutching a purple vase, the careless way books are loved and stored, the beauty of springtime, the grim look upon a loved ones face receiving bad news, the trail of crumbs left from a child, the celebratory wine glasses left from the evening before, the dried dandy lion presented with earnest after doing a bad thing, the plough-plop of rocks tossed in a creek bed, the pileup of shoes scattered next to a nearby doorway.... the sound of gravel bouncing off the wheel chambers of my car as I drive away for the last time.
I
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